The court Ombudsman published his annual report on Tuesday afternoon, showing that in the past year, 897 complaints were filed against judges, and decisions were issued in 871.
The commissioner, Judge Uri Shoham, handled 964 complaints, some of them from previous years. Of the 871 rulings handed down in 2023, 524 went to arbitration, accounting for 60% of all complaints. Of the 524 complaints, 38 (7%) were found to be justified.
In 27 of the complaints, the judge was given a comment, and three complaints ended with a ruling that they involved a systemic flaw.
An analysis of the complaints found to be justified shows that they involve extended legal proceedings, inadequacies in the legal proceedings, faulty administration of the trial, and improper behavior on the part of the judge.
The Ombudsman assesses that the decline in the number of justified complaints, or those that ended with a comment, derives mainly from the significant drop in the number of justified complaints in family and rabbinical courts.
In the report, the Ombudsman notes that many capital declarations by judges were renewed in 2023, six years after the previous capital declarations were filed in 2017. This is in addition to the handling of capital declarations by new and retired judges.